Digital Commons Network^™

Book Review Essay: Brazilian Race Relations In Hemispheric Perspective, Rhett S. Jones

Trotter Review

The late Oliver C. Cox, one of the most insightful black Americans from the leftist tradition, was not often fooled. In his classic 1948 work, Caste, Class, and Race, Cox, a long-time professor of sociology at Lincoln University in Missouri, revealed the nonsensical underpinnings of what then passed for the serious study of comparative race relations among sociologists in the United States. So successful was Cox that his book was thoroughly and deeply buried by the sociological establishment. When Pierre L. van den Berghe published Race and Racism: A Comparative Perspective in 1967, sociologists hailed his work as the …

Stratification And Subordination: Change And Continuity In Race Relations, E. Yvonne Moss, Wornie L. Reed

Trotter Review

One of the measures used to gauge progress made by African-Americans in gaining equal opportunity has been to compare and contrast the status of black Americans to that of white Americans using various social indices. Historically, the status of blacks relative to whites has been one of subordination; race has been a primary factor in determining social stratification and political status. Relations between white and black Americans were established during slavery and the Jim Crow era of segregation. In the infamous Dred Scott (1856) decison, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Taney articulated the fundamental nature of this system of racial …

News & Views - Vol. 08, No. 11 - May 28, 1990, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.

The Academic Workplace (Spring/Summer 1990): Notes On Teaching Pluralism, New England Resource Center For Higher Education At The University Of Massachusetts Boston, Zelda F. Gamson, Michael Morris, Bobbie Knable, Nancy Stoll

The Academic Workplace

No abstract provided.

Long-Term Care Policy: Where Are We Going?, Gerontology Institute, University Of Massachusetts Boston, Omb Watch

Gerontology Institute Publications

Millions of Americans suffer from physical or mental conditions that make it difficult for them to live fully independent lives. These are the frail elderly, disabled and chronically ill persons of all ages, and many mentally ill or mentally retarded persons. They need help to manage daily activities, whether they live in their own homes or in nursing homes.

Such care can be extremely expensive, since it often must be provided for many years, even a lifetime. Today, those costs are met largely by the individuals themselves or by their families and by public programs for low-income persons.

For many …

News & Views - Vol. 08, No. 09 - March 23, 1990, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.

Media Images Of Boston's Black Community, Kirk A. Johnson

Trotter Review

In their efforts to report on the forces that affect Boston's racial climate, the local media have typically focused on the more obvious institutional actors: businesses, city hall, school boards, churches, the courts, neighborhood groups. Rarely have the media themselves been subjected to the same scrutiny. This study represents one such effort. It is an analysis of the images of Boston's black community that are conveyed through the local news media. It asks the question: If a Bostonian relied solely on the local news for information about local blacks, what impressions would he or she be left with, and how …

The Changing Challenge: From Double Bind To Double Burden, Matina Horner

New England Journal of Public Policy

Has "fear of success" been overcome by our focus on individual achievement, or is today's working woman caught in an ever more exhausting circle of high expectations and guilt? The author of this article notes that professional accomplishment and femininity were once viewed as mutually exclusive, creating a double bind for women who wanted both, driving some to avoid too much success. But today, the economic interdependence of men and women is a reality, requiring that we move beyond the debate of the proper role of women and look at the real issues: burden sharing, support systems, and stresses on …

A Feminized Work Force, A Humanized Workplace, Evelyn Murphy

New England Journal of Public Policy

Enhancing the opportunities for women in the workplace in the next decade will become an economic imperative, not just an issue of social justice. In this article Lieutenant Governor Evelyn Murphy sets forth recommendations for policymakers in both the public and private sector that begin to change our notions of what constitutes a humanized workplace. If the economy is to remain strong, these initiatives will be required to improve business productivity as well as the life of all family members.

Women And Money: Getting Money And Using It, Sheryl R. Marshall

New England Journal of Public Policy

The author of this article has spent her career in the world of finance. Here she examines the way women make economic decisions. The article centers on attitudes concerning women, money, and financial independence; the availability or lack of capital for women who want to start businesses; and a strategy for using their economic clout to forward the agenda of the economic empowerment of women.

Reaching Tomorrow's Hispanic Leaders, Sister Thérèse Higgins

New England Journal of Public Policy

High school-age Hispanics have a 50 percent drop-out rate. College-age Hispanic youth account for only 3.9 percent of the United States college population. A report of the Commission on Minority Participation in Education and American Life challenged college planners to do something about the neglect of young minority students. However, Regis College had already developed a four-week residential summer program to enable Hispanic ninth-graders to complete high school and prepare for college. The anticipated outcome of this College Awareness Program is that the dream of higher education and empowerment for two hundred gifted young Hispanics will be realized.

Protest And Thrive: The Relationship Between Global Responsibility And Personal Empowerment, Sarah A. Conn

New England Journal of Public Policy

Economic empowerment is intricately linked to personal empowerment, which for many women starts with notions of caring and responsibility. When we care about ourselves, our family, our neighborhood, our community, and our world, we are often moved to action. Examples of women activists abound. This article examines the psychological forces that lead to individual empowerment and social change and warns us that to ignore our reactions to the world around us is to limit our own possibilities for personal growth. Personal power comes from taking responsibility for ourselves in a context of interconnectedness and interdependence. Awareness, understanding, direct experience, and …

Moving In The Economic Mainstream, Brunetta R. Wolfman

New England Journal of Public Policy

The requirements for economic mobility in a postindustrial society present many barriers for low-income women. Social policy and program goals for improving their opportunities should focus on educational, training, and entrepreneurial activities using individualized assessment, counseling, and academic and occupational advisers. Social consensus needs to be achieved in order to establish viable programs that address women's total needs rather than approaching the problem with fragmented, uncoordinated solutions.

Howth Castle - Vol. 05, No. 01 - 1990, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Howth Castle (1985-1993)

No abstract provided.

Commonwealth's Choice: Results From The Massachusetts Public Opinion Survey, Barry Bluestone, Mary Ellen Colten, Thomas Ferguson

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

From November 11 through December 4, 1989, the Center for Survey Research of the University of Massachusetts at Boston conducted a random digit dial survey of adults aged 18 and over in Massachusetts. A total of 423 individuals were interviewed in a sampling procedure that yielded a 63 percent response rate. In contrast to most media polls, this survey was carried out over a period of four weeks permitting extensive efforts at locating and interviewing difficult-to-reach, reluctant, or less interested respondents. This survey is likely to be more representative of the true population of Massachusetts than most state polls.

News & Views - Vol. 08, No. 05 - November 28, 1989, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.

News & Views - Vol. 08, No. 03 - October 18, 1989, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.

News & Views - Vol. 08, No. 02 - September 26, 1989, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.

The Hand That Pushes The Rock, Paula Rothenberg

Trotter Review

Only a very few schools in this country actually require all students to spend an entire semester thinking about issues of race and gender. Many more have found a way to incorporate these issues in required courses in “social problems” where racism and sexism get their two weeks along with environmental pollution and other current issues. I think this approach is dead wrong. Racism and sexism are not “problems” or “topics.” They are ways of defining reality and living our lives that most of us have learned along with learning how to tie our shoes and how to drink from …

Book Review Essay: Black Literature And Society In The Eighteenth Century, Rhett S. Jones

Trotter Review

The eighteenth century, a growing consensus among historians suggests, was a crucial period in the evolution of racism. Most Europeans entered the century with few fixed ideas on the nature of race and instead thought of themselves and others primarily in ethnic and religious terms. The English who invaded Jamaica (then colonized and occupied by the Spaniards) in 1655, for example, saw themselves as English Christians and the defenders of the island as Spanish “Papists.” Papists for the English of the time were not Christians at all but instead persons enlisted in the army of the anti-Christ. Nearly a century …

Sports Notes, Wornie L. Reed, Louis A. Ferleger

Trotter Review

The Boston Celtics do it again: The Boston Celtics continue to go out of their way to have a disproportionate number of white players on their team.

Race And Excellence In American Higher Education, James Jennings

Trotter Review

W,E.B. DuBois’ assessment of American higher education’s posture toward black students in 1926 — “The attitude of the northern institution toward the Negro student is one which varies from tolerance to active hostility” — could have been written today based on several investigations. The American Council on Education reported recently that “the higher education community must continue to address the issues of losses in participation at all levels for blacks; the segregation of Hispanics; the retention and graduation of minority students, both undergraduate and graduate; the lack of growth for minorities in faculty and staff ranks.” The College Board reports …

News & Views - Vol. 07, No. 10 -May 14, 1989, University Of Massachusetts Boston

1983-1991, News & Views

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Arrogance Of Race: Historical Perspectives On Slavery, Racism, And Social Inequality, Vernon J. Williams Jr.

Trotter Review

The Arrogance of Race is George M. Fredrick son’s latest work, and it is a profound one. This series of articles, many of which have been published previously, was written over a span of some 20 years and represents the mature reflections of one of this country’s leading intellectual historians. The work should be read by all serious students of race and racism.

African-Americans And Social Policy In The 1990'S, Wornie L. Reed

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

The basic social policy issue for African-Americans in the next decade will be a perennial objective - to have policies instituted that will bring them into the economic and social mainstreams of America. The main problems currently faced by blacks are quite familiar: inequalities in economic and social conditions. The new wrinkle in the 1980s is a downturn in racial progress, a downturn that is seen whether one is examining attitudes or specific social policies.

Racial divisions have increased sharply. The Reagan Administration's war against affirmative action, its refusal to allow access to decision-making by minorities, its fight against civil …

News And Notes

Trotter Review

Announcements about personnel updates and research news out of the William Monroe Trotter Institute and the Department of Black Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Miscegenation And Acculturation In The Narragansett Country Of Rhode Island, 1710-1790, Rhett S. Jones

Trotter Review

The histories of most New England states view blacks as a strange, foreign people enslaved in southern states, whom New Englanders rescued first by forming colonization and abolitionist societies and later by fighting a Civil War to free them. The existence of a black population in New England as early as the seventeenth century has been pretty much ignored. Indeed Anderson and Marten, of the Parting Ways Museum of Afro-American Ethnohistory, touched off a furor with their discovery that Abraham Pearse, one of the early residents of Plymouth Colony, was black.

The long neglect of New England’s black history has …

The Eritrean People's Liberation Front: A Case Study In The Rhetoric And Practice Of African Liberation, Tsenay Serequeberhan

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

The views of the various African thinkers, which will be systematically explored in this Study, are neither "true" in any absolute sense, nor are they an "ideology" or false consciousness. Rather, they are the self-expression of an open-ended historical process. The works of Fanon, Cesaire, Cabral, etc., with which we shall be engaged in formulating the overall perspective of the struggle for African freedom as a discourse aimed at reclaiming history, are the self-expression of this process itself. These works are the artful and effective self-presentation of those engaged in the struggle, i.e., the rhetoric of African liberation.

The basic …

Telling The Story Of The Early Black Aviators, Philip S. Hart

Trotter Review

The story of America’s early black aviators from the 1920s and 1930s has been one of the neglected themes in American aviation history. My interest in this topic began with research into family history. My mother’s uncle, J. Herman Banning, was a pioneer black aviator during this nation’s Golden Age of Aviation. I remember my mother, aunt, and grandmother talking about J. Herman Banning back when I was little, and in my teenage years I tried to find out more than I had learned from these family stories and photographs, but it was difficult for me to locate any information …

Sports Notes, Wornie L. Reed

Trotter Review

Another racial myth came tumbling down in the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, Korea. Blacks had never before been prominent in swimming competitions at the national level in the United States or at the international level. Several theories about the bone structure and body mass of black people have been offered to explain the absence of blacks on the victory stands at these top competitive levels. But at the 1988 Olympics Anthony Nesty, a black man from Surinam (South America), bested Matt Biondi, swimming’s golden boy in those Olympics, to win the 100-meter butterfly.